2021.04.10 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The illustration that I have chosen to introduce this essay is inspired by ancient Greek myths about dryads—that is, about nymphs or local goddesses who inhabit the wooden insides of trees, primarily oak trees, thus animating such trees. But my essay is not about… Read more
2021.04.03 | By Gregory Nagy §0. In a book titled Masterpieces of Metonymy (Nagy 2016|2015, hereafter abbreviated as MoM), I showed line drawings of black-figure pictures painted on two vases, both of Athenian manufacture and both dated to the earlier years of the sixth century BCE. In both line drawings, we see a picturing of the hero Achilles, who at this very moment is reaching out to receive his Shield—as… Read more
There are two cities on earth Divided by time and kindness And at the centre of their field Is a king who sits in silence About him move the reapers Drawing in the living grain Goodness or the void deceit That human life advances On the edges of this world… Read more
2021.03.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I recall here the happy occasion of my most recent viewing, in the year 2014, of the famous ancient Myrtiá (Μυρτιά) or ‘Myrtle Tree’ growing on the hallowed grounds of an old monastery, now a nunnery, in Palianí (Παλιανή), not much more than 20 kilometers southwest of Iráklio (῾Ηράκλειον), the ‘City of Herakles,’ on the island of Crete. This enormous old tree, the myriad… Read more
Down the path between the apples through the maple grove of suicides then left at the old wall along the wire fence to the brook- bank where narcissus noses into skunk cabbage and hepatica: Call me Apollo, crashing in the underbrush with my arrows, my bow saw and clippers out… Read more
2021.03.20 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I focus here on a time in history when the traveler Pausanias, who lived in the second century CE, visited the proud old city of Orkhomenos in the region of Boeotia. As we read in his report of that visit, he took a special interest in the traditional myths and rituals of the city’s inhabitants concerning goddesses worshipped there as the three Kharites or… Read more
